House Appropriations Panel OKs FY 2024 Defense Spending Bill
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House Appropriations Panel OKs FY 2024 Defense Spending Bill

The House Appropriations Committee on Thursday voted 34-24 to pass a fiscal year 2024 bill that would fund the agencies and programs within the Department of Defense and Intelligence Community.

The FY 2024 defense measure would provide $826 billion in discretionary spending, reflecting a 3.6 percent increase from the FY 2023 enacted level and about $286 million higher than the president’s proposed budget.

Included in the bill is funding for the F-35 and Next Generation Air Dominance program; nuclear triad modernization; and the office of strategic capital to advance the development of emerging technologies for defense applications.

The legislation would allocate funding for the Defense Innovation Unit and service branches to help speed up the acquisition processes.

The measure proposes a 5.2 percent salary increase for servicemembers, earmarks over $9 billion for the Pacific Deterrence Initiative and includes security cooperation funding for Taiwan.

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NSF-Backed Study Creates Prototype Method for Supercomputer Energy Efficiency Maximization
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NSF-Backed Study Creates Prototype Method for Supercomputer Energy Efficiency Maximization

A study supported by the National Science Foundation yielded a novel method to significantly reduce the energy needed to control the temperature of photonic chips, a critical component of supercomputers and data centers.

The findings of Oregon State University and Baylor University show promise in boosting energy efficiency in data centers, which account for 2 percent of total electricity consumption in the U.S., NSF said Wednesday.

The performance of photonic chips are optimized through thermal heaters, but they require several milliwatts of electricity per device, according to Alan Wang, a Baylor University researcher who co-developed the method.

Their team was able to reduce the heaters’ energy consumption by more than 1 million times using gate voltage, “which means using virtually no electric current,” noted John Conley, co-author of the study from OSU.

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DOD Could Send Additional Military Aid to Ukraine Based on $6.2B Valuation Error
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DOD Could Send Additional Military Aid to Ukraine Based on $6.2B Valuation Error

The Department of Defense overestimated the value of U.S. military equipment it handed over to Ukraine in support of the latter’s defense efforts against Russian invasion by about $6.2 billion, Axios reported Wednesday.

According to the report, the misvaluation could enable DOD to deliver more military assistance to Ukraine.

Sabrina Singh, deputy press secretary at the Pentagon, said DOD uncovered inconsistencies in the valuation of equipment during the department’s oversight of the presidential drawdown authority for the European country, overestimating the equipment by $2.6 billion in fiscal year 2022 and $3.6 billion in FY 2023.

“In a significant number of cases, services used replacement costs rather than net book value, thereby overestimating the value of the equipment drawn down from U.S. stocks and provided to Ukraine,” Singh said Tuesday during a press briefing.

On March 31, she noted that the DOD’s comptroller moved to address the accounting error by reissuing guidance to clarify how to value equipment.

“These valuation errors in no way limit or restricted the size of any of our PDAs or impacted the provision of support to Ukraine, and while the DOD — while the DOD retains the authority to utilize the recaptured PDA, this has no bearing on appropriated USAI or Ukraine PDA replenishment funding approved by Congress,” Singh added.

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Sen. Chuck Schumer Presents Safe Innovation Framework for AI Policy
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Sen. Chuck Schumer Presents Safe Innovation Framework for AI Policy

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., has proposed a new framework that would establish guardrails to ensure safety when it comes to artificial intelligence innovation.

Schumer said the proposed Safe Innovation Framework for AI Policy seeks to encourage innovation while advancing security, accountability, foundations and explainability.

For the security aspect, he cited how foreign adversaries could exploit AI for illicit activities.

“But we also need security for America’s workforce, because AI, particularly generative AI, is already disrupting the ways tens of millions of people make a living,” Schumer said Wednesday during his speech at a Center for Strategic and International Studies event.

The senator also suggested a legislative approach that would turn the framework into legislative action.

“Later this fall, I will convene the top minds in artificial intelligence here in Congress for a series of AI insight forums to lay down a new foundation for AI policy,” Schumer said.

He said those forums will address AI innovation, intellectual property, risk management and use cases, national security, workforce, transparency, liability and privacy, among other issues.

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Eric Beightel Appointed Federal Permitting Improvement Steering Council Executive Director
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Eric Beightel Appointed Federal Permitting Improvement Steering Council Executive Director

President Biden has appointed Eric Beightel, a two-decade environmental and transportation industry veteran, as executive director of the Federal Permitting Improvement Steering Council.

He will succeed outgoing executive director Christine Harada, who will transition to a new role within the Biden administration in July, the Permitting Council said Wednesday.

In his new position, Beightel will oversee a portfolio of large-scale infrastructure projects in renewable energy, broadband and electricity transmission sectors and work to improve the coordination and transparency of the federal infrastructure authorization process.

Beightel will join the Permitting Council from engineering and construction services firm HDR, where he was associate vice president and national lead for infrastructure policy and environmental strategy.

His government career included roles as a senior environmental policy adviser within the Department of Transportation’s Office of the Assistant Secretary for Policy and a policy adviser at the Office of Management and Budget.

The Permitting Council was established in 2015 under the Fixing America’s Surface Transportation Act to coordinate the government’s environmental reviews and authorizations for certain infrastructure projects.

US & India Partner to Boost Defense Innovation Collaboration for Startups
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US & India Partner to Boost Defense Innovation Collaboration for Startups

The U.S. and India have launched a strategic partnership to expand the countries’ collaboration to advance defense technology and manufacturing innovations.

The India-U.S. Defense Acceleration Ecosystem aims to build connections between American and Indian start-ups through various initiatives, including joint prize challenges, roundtable events and mentor-protege programs, the Department of Defense said Wednesday.

INDUS-X will launch an accelerator program to give start-ups access to defense commercialization, funding opportunities, business development and product refinement opportunities.

In addition, the program will boost information sharing among Indian and American universities and accelerator partners on their best practices in defense innovation, fielding and commercialization.

The Department of Defense’s Office of the Secretary of Defense and the Indian Ministry of Defense’s Innovations for Defense Excellence will jointly lead the INDUS-X activities.

A senior adviser group will assess the progress of the collaboration’s agenda and make recommendations for future initiatives.

USDA & NASA Extend Partnership to Address Challenges in Food Security, Climate Change
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USDA & NASA Extend Partnership to Address Challenges in Food Security, Climate Change

The Department of Agriculture and NASA have signed a memorandum of understanding to continue their partnership on multiple initiatives.

The two agencies’ collaborative projects include student outreach programs to promote careers in agriculture and science, technology, engineering and mathematics, USDA said Wednesday.

Since 2015, NASA and USDA have been working together on initiatives such as plant-related studies on the International Space Station. More recently, the federal organizations established programs such as Crop-CASMA, an online resource that contains weekly crop progress report from the National Agricultural Statistics Service to inform farmers’ planting strategies.

Scientists from the USDA Agricultural Research Service and NASA are also designing a plant health monitoring system that uses hyperspectral imaging to support plant growth chambers in space missions.

“From ensuring that future generations are able to reach new heights as they pursue careers in STEM and agriculture, to providing producers with critical data and improving global agricultural practices, USDA is honored to strengthen our partnership with NASA,” Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack remarked. “We recognize the critical interface between planet-wide food security, climate change, and space, and together we are advancing cutting edge innovation, research, and workforce development to tackle some of Earth’s greatest challenges.”

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Deltek Analysis Looks at Federal Spending on Cloud-Based Big Data Tech in Past 3 Fiscal Years
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Deltek Analysis Looks at Federal Spending on Cloud-Based Big Data Tech in Past 3 Fiscal Years

A new Deltek analysis shows that federal government spending on cloud-based big data technology platforms dropped from $789 million in fiscal year 2020 to $539 million in FY 2021 but rose by 65 percent to $891 million in FY 2022.

Spending of federal civilian agencies on cloud-based big data platforms remained steady in FY 2021 but increased by $116 million the following fiscal year, reaching $553 million in FY 2022, Alex Rossino, an advisory research analyst at Deltek, wrote in the market analysis piece published Wednesday.

Among the top civilian spenders were the departments of Energy and State, recording $68.5 million and $12 million, respectively, in FY 2022.

Following a decline in FY 2021, the Department of Defense’s spending on the technology climbed by 232 percent to $339 million in FY 2022, up from $102 million the previous fiscal year.

Analytics landed the top spot when it comes to the types of big data technologies being procured by agencies in the last three fiscal years, followed by storage and high-performance computing.

“Summing up, if the trend shown for FY 2022 holds, it suggests that spending on cloud-based big data technology will continue rising in FY 2023. Presumably, that means it will continue for the years to come,” Rossino noted.

“This is likely to be the case as quantum computing gets closer to reality,” he added.

Air Force’s MQ-9 Reaper Conducts 1st Dirt Landing
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Air Force’s MQ-9 Reaper Conducts 1st Dirt Landing

The U.S. Air Force’s MQ-9 Reaper remotely piloted aircraft has carried out its first landing on a dirt landing zone as part of a training exercise held at the Nine Mile Training Center near Fort Stockton, Texas.

During the event, the unmanned aerial vehicle, which was traditionally operated using line-of-sight antennas, demonstrated its ability to take off and land from anywhere in the world and support missions in austere environments, the Air Force said Wednesday.

“This capability will be critical in ‘tomorrow’s fight’ and nests perfectly with the Air Force’s Agile Combat Employment concept that focuses on smaller footprints, distributed operations and increased survivability while generating combat power,” said Lt. Col. Brian Flanigan, director of operations of the 2nd Special Operations Squadron.

The Air Force Special Operations Command exercise involved the participation of airmen from the 26th Special Tactics Squadron from Cannon Air Force Base, New Mexico.

MQ-9 Reaper is built by General Atomics’ aeronautical systems division to support intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance; close air support; combat search and rescue; and precision strike operations.

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GAO Report Cites Inconsistency in Cybercrime Reporting Mechanisms Among Federal Agencies
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GAO Report Cites Inconsistency in Cybercrime Reporting Mechanisms Among Federal Agencies

A report by the Government Accountability Office found that federal agencies have different approaches to reporting cybercrime, due in part to their varying definitions of the criminal activity.

In a report published Tuesday, GAO said that the lack of connection among the reporting mechanisms poses a challenge to establishing shared metrics, which could be addressed through the Better Cybercrime Metrics Act of 2022.

The study focused on 12 agencies including the FBI, Department of Justice, Internal Revenue Service and Department of the Treasury. GAO learned that these agencies have no standardized definition of cybercrime or approach to identifying, investigating and prosecuting such violations.

Eight of the 12 departments admitted to having difficulty in measuring the extent or impact of online criminal incidents. They also said they needed guidance in defining metrics for evaluating the impact of efforts to avoid or address the criminal cases.

GAO emphasized that the development of a cybercrime taxonomy under the Better Cybercrime Metrics Act could help the federal offices overcome their challenges. The Department of Justice is tasked with creating the taxonomy and notification categories in its national incident-based reporting system, expected for completion in May 2024.

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